News

"... For around 35 years, Binkley was one of early music’s foremost performers, scholars, and educators, particularly in the area of medieval music. His recordings with his colleagues in the Studio der frühen Musik—Andrea von Ramm, Sterling Jones, and at different times, singers Nigel Rogers, Richard Levitt, and Willard Cobb—brought to the table ...

"... When it comes to adapting Shakespeare for film, fidelity to the source material is considered paramount – even if that clashes with the vision of the filmmaker in charge. One criticism that could be leveled at Justin Kurzel’s gritty, grotty take on Macbeth is that the realistic edge the director brings to the project is blunted whenever a character opens their mouth to speak. ...

"The American countertenor Bejun Mehta exhibited a considerable range of vocal colours, refined phrasing and spectacular virtuosity in this programme of Baroque cantatas and arias, with La Nuova Musica, under the direction of the ensemble’s founder, David Bates. ...

"The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek is the English translation of Franco Montanari’s Vocabolario della Lingua Greca, based on the completely revised 3rd Italian edition published in 2013 by Loescher Editore, Torino. With an established reputation as the most important modern dictionary for Ancient Greek, it brings together 140,000 headwords taken from the literature, papyri, inscriptions and other sources of the archaic period up to the 6th Century CE, and occasionally beyond. ...

"There are many great books on the historical performance practices of Baroque music. Although the books have nothing to do with guitar, they are valuable because they approach performance practice from a universal musical perspective. Much of performance practice, after all, should be the same on guitar as it will be on strings or keyboards. But there are differences too and there are many opportunities to learn from our earlier plucked ancestors. Peter Croton, early music performer on guitar and lute (and more), and teacher at the world-renowned Schola Cantorum Basiliensis as well as at the Conservatories of Basel and Bern has tackled the task of making a handbook that will bring the new and old worlds together. In his book, Croton has the best of both worlds: a wealth of period sources and universal musical knowledge as well as specific reference to lute, Baroque guitar, and other plucked instruments and composers of the era. ...

"The Gregorian Institute of Canada is please to announce its 11th Annual Colloquium, to be held at St. Augustine’s Seminary, Toronto, ON, August 11-14. Our plans include a series of practical chant workshops ranging from introductory to advanced, featuring the outstanding clinician Adam Bartlett, composer and editor of Simple English Propers (CMAA, 2011), and editor of the Lumen Christi Missal, Lumen Christi Simple Gradual, and Lumen Christi Hymnal (Illuminare Publications, 2012-2015). Active as a teacher, workshop leader and speaker, Adam has travelled widely offering catechetical and training workshops on topics of Catholic sacred music and liturgical chant. ...

"The is the second of two posts examining tempo and pitch in early music. Naturally, we can only speculate as to the precise nature and relative importance of tempo and pitch in historical times. But we can certainly point out how specialists and performers of what we call early music today have misconstrued scant available information on tempo and pitch to reinforce a thoroughly modern aesthetic. Also, where tempo and pitch were ...

By Bach's time, the traditional forms of church service had been fundamentally altered by the Reformation, and in German churches Latin had yielded to the country's own language. To an extent, however, ...

"On October 28 the Reiss Engelhorn Museum (REM) in Mannheim, Germany, filed a lawsuit against the Wikimedia Foundation for making high-resolution images of public domain artworks from its collection available for download. The contested images include photos of works by the Rococo painter Anna Dorothea Therbusch, the Flemish still life painter Alexander Coosemans, and the Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob Ochtervelt, as well as a drawing of Michelangelo’s Moses by Peter Anton von Verschaffelt and Cäsar Willich‘s circa-1862 portrait of Richard Wagner. ...

“Bach had how many kids?!?” exclaimed students at Foster Elementary School when told that Johann Sebastian fathered 20 children. Bach Society Houston’s new pilot project Bach in Schools is a 50-minute presentation for elementary school students focusing on J.S. Bach’s life and music, featuring live performers from the Bach Society’s orchestra and professional choir, and a real harpsichord. ...

"Cambridge Early Music’s prestigious 2016 Festival of the Voice will run between Thursday 12 – Sunday 15 May [2016]. It will showcase many of the world's finest early music artists including: Vox Luminis, Voces8, The Gesualdo Six, Three Medieval Tenors and James Gilchrist, who will perform an eclectic range of music from medieval Conductus, Monteverdi, Lassus, Bach, Schubert and many others in some of Cambridge’s most beautiful and historic venues. ...

"In a banner year of three new works from the Dallas Opera, the company this week launched a different kind of premiere: a week-long Institute for Women Conductors. This school may be the only one of its kind in the world. ....

Google Cultural Institute is a hit with music groups enabling them to build storylines and interesting videos. Piffaro is highlighted in one of the latest Google Cultural Institute releases. Congratulations to Piffaro for ...

"If I could dream up the most epic vacation for myself, it would be to travel from city to city to see every major dance company and historical dance site. (Hey boss, do you think this could count as a business trip?) Okay, so I’m going to assume that’s not really in the cards for me right now. But Google’s new Cultural Institute can get us a little closer to The Dream. Its arts “museum” went live this week, and there are plenty of dance (and fine arts, and opera, and music) goodies to explore. ...

For those of you interested in purchasing some music CD's at Christmas time, Outhere Music is offering a 10% reduction off the price of it large inventory of CD titles. As there are too many early music CD titles to name ...

"Our starting point on this path lies in the late Middle Ages, when the first dance books in history were written in Lombardy. The path leads us further through the highest flourishing of the Renaissance, when Italian dance masters and dancers were active in all European courts and laid important foundations for the later ballet. Special emphasis is placed on the period of the cultural duel with France in the 18th century and the develop­ment of the great ballet reform, before we finally end our journey in the Risorgimento, Italy’s struggle for a unified statehood. ...

"The Women Writers Project and the Folger Shakespeare Library are offering a half-day workshop on digital humanities pedagogy. This workshop will focus on Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO), a new project that will provide online, encoded transcriptions of manuscripts from the Folger collection, and on Women Writers Online, a long-standing and well-loved collection of women's texts from 1526–1850. ...

The most recent newsletter from the Handel and Hendrix House Newsletter is out. If you are interested in getting tickets to some of the performances, you may want to do this promptly as most performances are already sold out. Note also the name change to reflect the fact that Jimi Hendrix once lived at the Handel House location (25 Brook Street, London). ...

From a recent article on the CIncInatI.com website. This article gives good insight of measures taken in moving a large library, over 1 million pieces of inventory, to a temporary location during a building restoration. It also gives us insight on the importance of cataloguing and even digitizing our music for the sake of its longevity. (Marc Paré, Editor EarlyMusicNews.org)

"Since summer, three librarians at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra have been up against a daunting deadline. They are trying to put up to a million pieces of music into as much order as possible by Monday, when it all has to be moved out of Music Hall to prepare for the historic hall’s renovation in June. ...

"Once upon a time, early music was distinguished by two factors: 1) instruments are tuned to A=415, and 2) it must be played as fast as possible. In fact the two phenomena are somewhat related. When strings are slackened a bit they ...

"During this exploration of music from the Austro-German Baroque, Florilegium were joined by the baritone Roderick Williams in a programme of music which placed the music and career of J.S. Bach in the context of three older contemporaries: Franz Tunder (1614-67), Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1701) and Heinrich Biber (1644-1704). ...

Editor's Tips

------------------------------

EarlyMusicNews.org

RSS Newsfeed

To activate your newsfeed, click o­n the newsfeed icon next to your
browser's URL window (if the newsfeed icon is missing choose this link:
EarlyMusicNews Feed
and choose your setting for the feed. You will then be able to see any
news additions to the site in your "Bookmarks" or "Favourites"
toolbar without even visiting the site. If you find a particular item of
interest, choose that item and you will be taken to the
http://www.EarlyMusicNews.org site to read that particular article. Feeds
for
specific news categories are also available on the “News
Categories” page. (ed.)

------------------------------

Follow Us On

------------------------------

Translate this Website

------------------------------

Editor's Desk

----------
Get Mentioned On Our Pages!

Post your news item o­n your website and let us know of it. We will then
publish a short excerpt of your news item linking it back to your site.

The “Summer Workshop and Festival 2017” season has come and gone!
Have you posted a review of a recent workshop on your site or blog page?
Let us know and we will mention it on our news pages. Summer
Workshop Organizers: let us know of your plans as your summer
workshop details are finalized for 2018.
Visit ourSummer
Workshop Links ("Web Links" section) for summer
workshop locations.